According to this tale, a young camel was buried with the Khan, and the camel's mother was later found weeping at the grave of its young. Turnbull (2003, p. 24) tells another legend in which the grave was re-discovered 30 years after Genghis Khan's death. Similarly, the Altan Tobchi (1604) maintains that only his shirt, tent and boots were buried at the mausoleum in the Ordos (Ratchnevsky, pp. 143ff.) The Erdeni Tobchi (1662) claims that Genghis Khan's coffin may have been empty when it arrived in Mongolia. Other tales state that his grave was stampeded over by many horses, that trees were then planted over the site, and that the permafrost also played its part in the hiding of the burial site. Īnother folkloric legend meanwhile says that a river was diverted over his grave to make it impossible to find, echoing the myth of the burial of the Sumerian King Gilgamesh of Uruk or of the Visigoth leader Alaric. This tale does not appear in contemporary sources, however. Finally, the legend states that when they reached their destination they committed suicide. In a frequently recounted tale, Marco Polo tells that the 2,000 slaves that attended to his funeral were killed by the soldiers sent to guard them, and that these soldiers were in turn killed by another group of soldiers which killed anyone and anything that crossed their path, in order to conceal where he was buried. In the "Travels of Marco Polo" he writes that "It has been an invariable custom, that all the grand khans, and chiefs of the race of Genghis-khan, should be carried for interment to a certain lofty mountain named Altai, and in whatever place they may happen to die, although it should be at the distance of a hundred days' journey, they are nevertheless conveyed thither."
The Secret History of the Mongols has the year of Genghis Khan's death (1227) but no information concerning his burial. Marco Polo wrote that, even by the late 13th century, the Mongols did not know the location of the tomb. The Genghis Khan Mausoleum is a temple dedicated to Genghis Khan in modern-day Inner Mongolia, but is not his burial site.Īccording to legend, Genghis Khan asked to be buried without markings or any sign, and after he died, his body was returned to present-day Mongolia. The site remains undiscovered, although it is strongly implied that the most likely location is somewhere in the vicinity of the Mongol sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun in the Khentii mountain range. The location of the burial place of Genghis Khan (died August 1227) has been the object of much speculation and research. Burkhan Khaldun is a sacred mountain in Mongol culture that was venerated by Genghis Khan
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